CapeTown Computing History

When we were looking for a way to present our company history we looked at a lot of different aspects, website, blog, search engine optimization and a sense of completeness that would do the 24 years justice. We have just updated the our website to include a historical 3D presentation that shows the depth of the chronology, dating back 24 years, and the “stones that got us across the river” so to speak.

We think that the people at BEEDOCS (http://www.beedocs.com) deserve a lot of credit for their TimeLine 3D application. To be honest when we found them we were looking for someone else, we stumbled across them and the look of the 3D visual context chronology display caught our eye.

Historical Summary

CapeTown Computing provides standard and customized software solutions to the commerce systems marketplace. Through our CAPETOWN ENTERPRISE COMMERCE Systems Division it provides the Art of Commerce™ merchandising supply and fulfillment system and Imageion™ web and workflow system products to the business and professional community.

Integrated business fulfillment systems for both the service and product industry sectors encompassing multiple business lines and channels comprised of dynamic high performance client/server solutions with a focus on Internet Presence, Market Identity and Customer Independence.

The company posesses over 24 years in the Systems Development and Infrastructure marketspace within such industries as Insurance & Reinsurance, Banking, Law, Chain Retail, General Inventory, Construction, Engineering, Manufacturing, Process Engineering, Supply Chain Management, Logistics, Distribution, Transportation, Accounting, General Management & Administration. Registered as a sole proprietorship in Ontario, Canada in 1987 and incorporated as CAPETOWN COMPUTING CORPORATION (“CAPETOWN COMPUTING”) in 1998.

CapeTown Computing is a proven provider of high impact, large volume transaction processing applications, through development and design and full system engineering of systems for Industry leading companies both in the legacy and client/server arena. With intellectual property amassed from industry projects for clients and internal projects geared towards an enhanced customer offering, CapeTown Computing has gathered a significant application portfolio that is presented under two product areas. The Imageion™ and Art of Commerce™ platforms build upon the CapeTown Enterprise Commerce Architecture with specific industry initiatives providing either system or both to be deployed within a customer organization.

Imageion™ is very much about the future of our company and our vision for the future of the planet. The system is applicable in any business and delivers the elements that all organizations would otherwise have to develop for themselves, from the Login on your enterprise Internet Presence and integrated with your day to day workflow. Since 2005, CapeTown Computing has been developing and using the Imageion™ system in its own day to day operations and billing environment as an extension to the existing system which had been in use since our inception, thus making our success your success. There is a fundamental difference in developing a system that you yourself make use of and one that is developed for a user community. We hope to see many make use of the Imageion™ Web and Workflow System.

CapeTown Computing Systems are deeply routed in client server relational database technology, transparent web applications and distributed component objects that provide for a solid performance platform and easily enhanced applications development environment that moves seamlessly to new database and operating system platforms.

With expertise in relational database technology from the late 1980’s through to present day technologies, CapeTown Computing can deliver on your most challenging application engineering initiatives.

Notable Works and Events

From 1991 through 1999 works with DYLEX LIMITED accounted for our sizable works where the divisional inventories across a Canadian distribution network in as much as 1.2 billion retail and 750 million cost values (BIWAY, NATIONAL LOGISTICS SERVICES) were managed from source to distribution center to store level ultimately reaching a point in development where stores were informed of goods inbound in a paperless environment, along with carrier system integration and warehouse inventory workflow operational automation. In addition CapeTown handled special projects in inventory specialties for all divisions, Fairweather flag- ship stores and Dylex Distribution working independently and with Dylex IT Services.Dylex Limited was Canada’s largest retailers involved in the operation of specialty retail stores, such as women’s wear, menswear, and family stores. From its onset the company provided a diversified customer focused delivery through chain branding while maintaining retail and manufacturing operations in an integrated environment, where at its peak it was operating 17 chains with more than 2,700 stores in the United States and Canada.

In 1998/2000 we were called upon by Munich Reinsurance Company to assist in year 2000 transitional development projects and Golf Town Canada to provide start up technological assistance for their emerging retail chain of stores and Games Workshop Canada for a new head office applications environment with Retail Store integration.

With Munich Re, we were able to assist them in completing two mainframe to Windows client/server application transitions and added value by way of sharing database access and performance technology for their other projects. At the time Munich Re held the status of the worlds largest Reinsurance Company with assets exceeding 200 billion (CDN) and a surplus of 74 billion (CDN) and in-force premiums of 36.6 billion (CDN), nearly twice that of its nearest competitor. Since 2000 Munich Re has grown the business to 387.5 billion of In-Force Life Reinsurance as of 2007. There is no other reinsurer that offers in the same measure.

With Golf Town we worked with IBM Canada to create the head office and store systems infrastructure that would allow for a balanced processing approach to their PC based Retail Store and centralization of information. This resulted in leading edge IBM Retail hardened equipment at the store level and a clustered server network at head office. Upon achieving an initial count of 13 stores and a head office move from temporary startup to a permanent facility, Golf Town began the process of bringing in technology and staff to allow them to move towards self sufficiency. In September of 2007, Golf Town was acquired by OMERS for 240 million (CDN), it operated 32 stores and employed over 1200 people at the time.

CapeTown systems accounted for Canadian retail, trade sales, mail order sales and head office administrative support for Games Workshop, a customer since 1995 through to 2003.

In addition to providing head office support for day to day business merchandising and warehouse operations, support for IBM Retail Equipment at the store front was also provided along with database integration of retail store sales and inventory management. Games Workshop Canada represented the Canadian arm of the global United Kingdom based com- pany and with the alliance with Lord of the Rings popularity, the group reported sales of £136,650,000 sterling in 2005 and employed 3200 at its current standing peak.

In 2001 through 2005 we worked with Maritime-Ontario Freight Lines, providing systems infrastructure and web presence development and integration of their pre-existing PC/UNIX applications culminating in a company web site supporting their customer, alliance partners, internal resources and paperless initiatives across their Canadian terminals and third party locations, with transaction volumes of 25 thousand carriage shipments per month while not including consolidations, flow through, web user access and document image transactions.

Maritime-Ontario Freight Lines, as of 2007, was reported to be billing 150 million (CDN) per year, with 20 terminals, 1200 employees, in a 160 tractors and 1150 trailer operation. M-O is a 40 year operation in Canada, formerly a supplier to Dylex/Biway where their relationship with us began from a supportive role in the overall Dylex/Biway Inventory Logistics System for their portion of that carriage.

In September of 2004, the CAPETOWN.COM domain name, the companies primary domain name was sold to a U.S. company specializing in city domain space marketing, upon review of the offer against potential domain auction in a European market and the residual offer be- ing supplied, the domain name was sold while an interest in the revenue was achieved along with the cash transaction of 212,500 (USD). This provided that the domain name would be used for the purposes of promoting tourism and trade in CapeTown, South Africa and that a future sale without penalty would not take place for a minimum of 5 years. The agreement is still in force today, the website in use can be seen at http://www.capetown.com as of this writing, June of 2009.

TRISI Sales (formerly Frank Trisi Sales), a customer with CapeTown Computing, since our inception, with an average sales volume of 5 million (CDN) in the mid to late 2000‘s, made use of Enterprise Commerce systems platforms, Art of CommerceTM, as it began to make strides with customers such as Walmart, Zellers, Canadian Tire, Home Outfitters and like retailers. With EDI and web requirements the company found itself in a position of transition in the very competitive housewares industry with approximately 4000 items in its catalog and an agent network across Canada.

“Your Expression” made use of our Retail Application and a custom card creation application that we provided when they decided to implement a compliant year 2000 application and track customer information in its business. Utilizing out signage generation software, we scaled it to meet the customer requirement at the register in places like the busy downtown core.

For Color Steels, CapeTown Computing provided support for their network introduction and expansion to Montreal, in replacement of their existing dated infrastructure an ethernet based network that provided a mixed operating environment between UNIX and PC based systems was introduced. When the company moved to a larger more expansive facility, we were called upon again to provide support for an upgraded server environment with in-house internet presence and communications capabilities.

With an additional customer base of 100 customers, throughout the balance of the work effort and the achievement of two product platforms, the Art of Commerce (TM) X-Chain Merchandising System and the Imageion (TM) Web and Workflow System and three additional offerings; shIP2.com, Image++ and CapeTown Enterprise Commerce.

Other products of note would include the ECMS, Entertainment Center Management System, which was never since converted to Windows from DOS X-Base development prior to 1998 and still has users to this day. The product was sold to approximately 50 or so retail entertainment establishments within the North American market and one as far as Saudi Arabia.

The company has had a head count of seven during peak periods and two when reaching completion of the companies platform objectives it ceased client operations due to a future obligation, and after completing all commitments and irrespective of outstanding amounts due from clients. The company has employed 15 persons during its lifetime and all have since continued on to good careers in the technical and applications development industry.

If anything can be said about CapeTown Computing, it would have to be that the company pounded a lot of pavement to build its systems and fulfill client requirements, was not afraid to try new things, give new people an opportunity and achieved results while doing it, every single time out.